by the late seventies, two schools of husbandry surface. Hibernation and the opposing "lite cycle" The Hibernation method, was centered in Tucson and with many of the "difficult" species, like greeri, thayeri, mex mex, blairs and alterna. (at the time)
By the mid seventies, I was producing hundreds of Mexicana. Including striped blairs, totally speckled alterna etc.
Then the WAR. I moved to Seattle to work at Woodland park zoo. The Curator of reptiles was the head and spear leader of photoperiod husbandry, None other Then ERNIE POO WAGNER. As luck would have it, the company I was working for, rented me a house about two small blocks from ERNIE. So the day I moved up there in a U-Haul truck. I pulled up to the enemy camp. The hate was, wait, there was no hate or hating or fighting, He came out to meet me and took all my snakes and would not give them back. Saying something like, I will give them back once you get settled. And he did. Once I was settled in, I investigate this thing called photo period. Well, he kept his snakes in a basement(perfect place for snakes) And if it was at night, you had to use a flashlite to see the snakes. hahahahahahahahaha Ernie explained how he manipulated the lite cycle to allow breeding and did not utililze hibernation. All the time I was wondering, Ernie what was the temperature in that basement? Oh 55F year around. ERNIE, that IS hibernation. Actually no fighting, the only disagreement was, we kept trying to "borrow"(steal) eachothers snakes. While we again disagreed on terminology, it came down to, call it whatever you want, as long as it works, and Ernies method worked. Some ways better, some ways not so good. pt2

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